Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  The result was a triumph for France and a defeat for Germany. Sir Edward Grey called it "almost a fiasco for Germany; out of this mountain of a German-made crisis came a mouse of colonial territory in Africa." Kiderlen had taken great risks, had made a massive display of diplomatic force, and had achieved nothing in Morocco: no slice of territory, no naval base on the Atlantic, no retreat of the French from Fez. Even in the Congo, he had finally accepted less than half the territory he had earlier fixed as an irreducible minimum. For this he had provoked a prolonged international crisis, called the world's attention to Britain's support of France, and raised the French Republic to a level of prestige the country had not enjoyed since the Second Empire.

  There was no way to mask these facts, and the air in Berlin filled with anger and recrimination. The nationalist press roared that the settlement was "the last nail in the coffin of German prestige." Harden complained, "Without acquiring anything of moment, we are more unpopular than ever." Friedrich von Lindequist, the German Colonial Secretary, resigned, declaring that he could not defend the agreement before the Reichstag. Bulow called the episode "deplorable… a fiasco… like a damp squid, it startled, then amused, and ended by making us look ridiculous." According to Bulow, Kiderlen himself blamed the disaster solely on William II, who "throughout this whole diplomatic campaign veered from absurd threats and demands to utter discouragement and pessimism leading to unnecessary concessions."

  Responsibility for the Panther's spring had been Kiderlen's, but it was Bethmann who rose to defend the Franco-German agreement in the Reichstag. He pointed out that the government had achieved "a considerable increase of Germany's colonial domain" without giving up anything in Morocco that Germany had ever had and that "an important dispute with France had been settled peacefully." "We drew up a program and we carried it out," he declared-and the chamber burst into laughter and derisive shouts. When the Chancellor concluded, "We expect no praise but we fear no reproach," the atmosphere changed, but not for the better. "The silence," reported the Berliner Tageblatt, "was like that of the grave. Not a hand moved, no applause rang out." The reply to the Chancellor, primarily from the nationalists, but in which all parties participated, was savage. Ernst Basserman, the National Liberal leader, wanted to know why military pressure had not been exerted on France in the Vosges, where the German Army was powerful, rather than at Agadir by a mere gunboat. Ernst von Heyderbrand, the Conservative leader, complained loudly of the decline of German prestige and pointed the finger of blame at England:

  "Like a flash in the night, all this has shown the German people where the enemy is. We know now, when we wish to expand in the world, when we wish to have our place in the sun, who it is that lays claim to world-wide domination… Gentlemen, we Germans are not in the habit of permitting this sort of thing and the German people will know how to reply… We shall secure peace, not by concessions, but with the German sword."

  Heyerbrand's speech was punctuated by hearty, ostentatious applause from the royal box, where the Crown Prince was sitting with one of his younger brothers. Bethmann was infuriated by this expression of partisan, antigovernment sentiment and demanded of the Kaiser that he discipline his Heir. William obliged. Summoning both his son and his Chancellor, he allowed Bethmann to remonstrate with the Crown Prince and explain in detail the position of the Imperial government. Afterward, Bethmann was content with his own role. "My conscience lets me sleep," he said. "War for the Sultan of Morocco, for a piece of the Congo or for the Brothers Mannesmann would have been a crime."… "If I had driven toward war, we would now stand somewhere in France, our fleet would largely lie at the bottom of the North Sea, Hamburg and Bremen would be blockaded or bombarded, and the entire nation would ask me, Why this?… And it would rightly string me up on the nearest tree." About this time, when his friend Sir Edward Go-schen, the British Ambassador, asked whether he still had time to play his usual Beethoven sonata before going to bed, Bethmann replied, "My dear friend, you and I like classical music with its plain and straightforward harmonies. How can I play my beloved old melodies with the air full of modern discord?"

  For Kiderlen, the debacle was personal. In January 1912, less than two months after signing the convention with Cambon, Kiderlen appeared in Rome, where Bulow was living. "I thought he looked ill," Bulow observed. "His face had a worn and puffy look and certainly he drank far too heavily." Bulow cautioned him to slow down, but Kiderlen replied that he would not last long in any case. His influence in the government had eroded almost to nothing; when Haldane, the British Minister of War, came to Berlin to discuss Anglo-German relations, the German Foreign Minister was excluded from most of the negotiations. On December 30, 1912, one year after his humiliation, Kiderlen, home for Christmas in his native Stuttgart, drank six glasses of cognac after dinner, collapsed, and died of a heart attack.

  CHAPTER 40

  "I Do Believe That I Am a Glowworm"

  One consequence of the Agadir Crisis was a change within the British Cabinet: Reginald McKenna was replaced as First Lord of the Admiralty by Winston Churchill. The cause was a sudden worry about the direction of the navy. In the middle of August, before Kiderlen left Berlin for his Alpine holiday and Cambon returned to Paris for instructions, a serious war scare gripped the British government. Sir Edward Grey had urged that the navy be kept in readiness and, accordingly, the Atlantic Fleet was concentrated at Portland and not allowed to sail on its summer cruise to Norway. Special night guards were posted at the Admiralty, large orders for naval ammunition were placed, and the tunnels and bridges of the South Eastern Railway were patrolled day and night. Meanwhile, staff officers of the British and French armies bent over maps to prepare the landing of four to six British divisions on the Continent.

  On August 23, after Parliament had risen, Asquith called a secret, all-day meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence and asked for a presentation of the war plans of the British Army and Navy. Grey and Lloyd George were present, along with Churchill, who, as Home Secretary, would not normally have been involved. The services were represented by the two Cabinet ministers,

  Haldane and McKenna; Sir William Nicholson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff; Sir Henry Wilson, Director of Military Operations; and Sir Arthur Wilson, the First Sea Lord. The meeting began at eleven-thirty a.m. and continued until six p.m.; the army was given the morning, the Navy the afternoon.

  General Sir Henry Wilson presented the army's war plan in a detailed exposition. Standing before a large map of northwestern Europe, he described the threat perceived by the French and British General Staffs. German mobilization would produce no army divisions, French mobilization only eighty-five divisions. The moment war began, Moltke would turn three quarters of his strength against France, leaving only twenty-two divisions to screen the east against Russia. The right wing of the German offensive against France would wheel through Belgium in order to bypass the fortress system on the Franco-German frontier. Even if the Belgian Army were to fight-which was by no means certain-the dispatch of a British Expeditionary Force at the earliest possible moment would support the French left flank. Six regular British infantry divisions and one cavalry division, 160,000 men, had been assigned this role, and plans had been carefully worked out with the French to hurry them across the Channel and into the line. Railway timetables had been worked out in such detail that there were even ten-minute breaks to allow the troops to have tea. The War Office had printed thousands of terrain maps of Belgium and northern France and Haldane had already designated Sir John French to command the Expeditionary Force. The British force, Wilson declared, would help to dam the German flood; in addition, their presence would be important psychologically. French soldiers would know that they were not fighting alone. Before he sat down, Wilson asked Sir Arthur Wilson for Admiralty assurance that the transport of the Expeditionary Force across the Channel would be guaranteed by the navy. The meeting adjourned for lunch at two.

  When it reconvened at three, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Ar
thur Wilson stood up to present the navy's plans. Wilson resented being forced to do what he was doing. There was no Naval War Staff because both Wilson and Fisher had resisted any dilution of the prerogatives of the First Sea Lord. Both admirals preferred to maintain absolute control over administration, training, and deployment of the fleet. They believed that war plans should be prepared and held in great secrecy by the First Sea Lord and the Commanders-in-Chief and, for fear of leakage, not divulged to the army or to politicians. Nevertheless, at that moment, under the direct order of the Prime Minister, Sir Arthur Wilson had no choice.

  Admiral Wilson's presentation was rambling and opaque. The navy's strategy in a war against Germany, he announced, would be to clamp a close blockade on the German coast, provoke a great sea battle, and annihilate the German Fleet. Light forces-destroyers and light cruisers-would prowl close to shore while, over the horizon, battleships and battle cruisers would prowl in wait for the High Seas Fleet. Every vessel in the navy would be devoted to these tasks and Wilson regretted that he could not give assurances regarding escorting troopships to the Continent. Perhaps, once the German Fleet had been defeated and the seas swept clean, troops could be transported. But not, he thought, to France, where a tiny British Expeditionary Force would be overwhelmed and devoured by the huge Continental armies.* Wilson subscribed to Fisher's thesis: the British Army should be used as a projectile to be fired by the navy. The navy's choice for military operations would be the seizure of Heligoland and then, eventually, a landing inside the Baltic on the coast of Pomerania, from where the British Army could threaten Berlin.

  Wilson's listeners, particularly Haldane and the generals, were aghast. So much effort had been put into building an efficient Regular Army which could be used as an Expeditionary Force; so much planning had gone into coordinating initial operations with the French; now the navy was refusing even to transport the troops to the battlefield. At the First Sea Lord's proposal that the British Army be "projected" onto the German coast, Haldane snorted with disgust. Any force landed in Pomerania would necessarily be so small that, as Bismarck had said, it could be "rounded up by a few Prussian policemen." Sir William Nicholson asked why the British Navy thought itself better qualified than the British Army to plan a land campaign against the German Army. Did the Admiralty possess maps of the German railway system? Disdainfully, Admiral Wilson replied that it was not the Admiralty's business to have such maps. "I beg your pardon," said Nicholson. "If you meddle with military problems, you are bound not only to have these maps but to have studied them." McKenna backed up his Sea Lord, arguing that sending the British Expeditionary Force to France would doom it and that Britain's efforts ought to be concentrated on the war at sea. Sir Henry Wilson hit back by reminding the committee where the principal danger lay: in the massive power of the German Army. French generals, facing this juggernaut, did not place much value on

  * Sir Arthur Wilson also argued that the British Army could not fight in France because British soldiers did not speak French.

  sea power. A naval correspondent for The Times had written that British sea power was worth 500,000 bayonets to France. "Our Navy is not worth 500 bayonets to them," Henry [General] Wilson declared. Indeed, "[General] Joffre did not value it as one bayonet."

  By the time the meeting broke up, the navy had done itself great harm. No decision had been made between the fundamentally divergent war strategies of the two fighting services, but it was clear that the army's careful analysis and detailed planning had made a far better impression than Admiral Wilson's vague and imperious monologue. Haldane, who had spent five years at the War Office fashioning the British Army into a modern weapon, was particularly appalled. He went directly to Asquith and threatened to resign unless something was done. "The fact is that the admirals live in a world of their own," he wrote to the Prime Minister. "The Fisher method, which Wilson appears to follow, that war plans should be locked in the brain of the First Sea Lord, is out of date and impracticable. Our problems of defense are far too numerous and complex to be treated in that way… Unless this problem is tackled resolutely, I cannot remain in office." Asquith replied that the Admiralty plan was "puerile and I have dismissed it at once as wholly impracticable," and he informed the Admiralty that the Cabinet sided with the War Office; the Expeditionary Force must be transported to France. When McKenna and the admirals continued to resist, it became obvious that a change would have to be made.

  It was easiest to replace McKenna. Haldane believed that the solution lay in stripping the office of First Sea Lord of autocratic power by forming a Naval War Staff similar to the Army General Staff, and he believed that he was the best man to do that job. His task at the War Office was finished. "In 1911 I had begun to feel that the back of the necessary work had been broken and to fear that I was becoming stale," he wrote later. He told Asquith that he had no great desire to become First Lord but that, practically speaking, no one else could create a Naval War Staff. Asquith, characteristically, shrank from decision. With feelings between the two services running high, it would insult the navy to send an army broom to clean up the Admiralty. Besides, Haldane had just been made a Viscount and had moved from the Commons to the Lords. Asquith wanted his First Lord to sit in the Commons, where he could lead the debate on Naval Estimates and deal with the querulous old admirals and amateur naval experts who habitually made trouble and needed silencing.

  In addition, there was another candidate. Winston Churchill attended the August 23 meeting because, throughout the summer of Agadir, he had thrust himself into issues of foreign and defense policy. On August 13, he had sent Asquith a powerful memorandum analyzing the first stages of a Continental war in which the German Army swept into France through Belgium. "By the twentieth day," Churchill forecast, "the French armies will have been driven from the line of the Meuse and will be falling back on Paris." To blunt this threat, Churchill had recommended that four Regular Army divisions, 107,000 men, be dispatched immediately to France, with two more divisions, another 53,000 men, to follow as soon as the naval blockade of the German coast was in place. Meanwhile, he said, 100,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army should be brought to France via the Mediterranean and the port of Marseilles. Churchill's grasp of the subject and eloquence on paper impressed the Prime Minister. While favoring the army war plan, Churchill also cast doubt upon the navy. After the August 23 meeting, he wrote a series of letters to Asquith, probing for soft spots in the Admiralty's planning. "Are you sure that the ships we have at Cromarty are strong enough to defeat the whole High Seas Fleet?" he wrote to Asquith on September 13. "If not, they should be reinforced without delay."

  Asquith took five weeks to make up his mind. By mid-September, Kiderlen and Cambon had returned to Berlin to negotiate and the danger of war was quickly receding. Asquith began going to a rented country house on the coast of East Lothian in Scotland, traveling from London in a sleeper compartment on Friday nights and returning on Sunday nights. It was a restful place, with an avenue of lime trees, an exceptional library, and a private golf course stretching down to the sea. Even here Churchill followed him, ostensibly to play golf in the autumn sunshine. On September 27, he was there when Haldane drove over from his family home at Cloan to see the Prime Minister. "As I entered the drive… I saw Winston Churchill standing at the door," Haldane wrote. "I divined that he had heard of possible changes and had come at once to see the Prime Minister." Unhappy at having to make a choice, Asquith at one point put the fifty-five-year-old Haldane and the thirty-six-year-old Churchill in the same room and told them to decide what was best. Haldane, aware of the drawbacks of his own candidacy, offered to take the Admiralty for one year and then relinquish it to Churchill. Sensing victory, the Home Secretary declined. Finally, Asquith made up his mind. "He and my father played golf together in the afternoon," remembered Violet Asquith, the Prime Minister's daughter. "I was just finishing tea when they came in. Looking up, I saw in Winston's face a radiance like the sun." She asked whether he would
like tea. He looked at her "with grave but shining eyes. 'No, I don't want tea, I don't want anything, anything in the world. Your father has just offered me the Admiralty.' "

  Churchill recalled that day in language of power and portent: "Mr. Asquith… asked me quite abruptly whether I would like to go to the Admiralty… I said, 'Indeed I would.'… The fading light of evening disclosed in the far distance the silhouettes of two battleships steaming slowly out of the Firth of Forth. They seemed invested with a new significance to me.